Riot police were forced to restore order inside the basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem after rival groups of Orthodox and Armenian clerics clashed in a dispute over the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions inside the church.

About 100 clergymen from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches, armed with brooms, came to blows during the cleaning of the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas celebrations.

Although it is two hundred years, and more, since I laid down the cares of an eventful temporal existence and took up residence in my long home, Our Gracious Lord has seen fit to bestow upon my spirit the gift of perpetual cognition, and He has granted the further boon of permitting me, for a few moments, to assume sufficient corporeality to pen this letter, which I place before Your Excellency as the cri de coeur of a patriot whose efforts on behalf of his country have been deemed by its citizens to possess no little significance.

I beseech thee to go henceforth and read the rest, as one must do in all things Paco.

MOSCOW — Firefighters extinguished a massive fire aboard a docked Russian nuclear submarine Friday as some crew members remained inside, officials said, assuring that there was no radiation leak and that the vessel’s nuclear-tipped missiles were not on board.

Military prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether safety regulations were breached, and President Dmitry Medvedev summoned top Cabinet officials to report on the situation and demanded punishment for anyone found responsible.

The fire broke out Thursday at an Arctic shipyard outside the northwestern Russian city of Murmansk where the submarine Yekaterinburg was in dry-dock. The blaze, which shot orange flames high into the air through the night, was put out Friday afternoon and firefighters continued to spray the vessel with water to cool it down, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

…No. 15 Baylor still pulled out an incredible Alamo Bowl victory in the highest-scoring regulation bowl game in history, beating Washington 67-56 in the wildest shootout of this bowl season or any other in memory.

This is exactly why I thought RG3 earned the Heisman this year: Baylor’s defense basically doesn’t exist. When your team gives up on average nearly 36 points per game yet you still end up 9-3 (now 10-3) and beat several ranked teams…well then whoever is scoring those points for you is probably having one hell of a better year than somebody on a team whose defense only gives up 12 or so points a game.

The group led him down to the cellar, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men.

…Determined to finish the job, Prince Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, leaving the conspirators no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to get one, and while at the palace, he went to check on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Yusupov. He grabbed Yusupov and attempted to strangle him. At that moment, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at Rasputin. After being hit three times in the back, he fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission. Some accounts say that his killers also severed his penis (subsequently resulting in urban legends and claims that certain third parties were in possession of the organ).[23][24][25] After binding his body and wrapping him in a carpet, they threw him into the icy Neva River. He broke out of his bonds and the carpet wrapping him, but drowned in the river.

Three days later, Rasputin’s body, poisoned, shot four times, badly beaten, and drowned, was recovered from the river. An autopsy established that the cause of death was drowning. It was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him. There is a report that after his body was recovered, water was found in the lungs, supporting the idea that he was still alive before submersion into the partially frozen river.

Even if that’s not quite how things happened it sure makes an interesting tale.

Judging by their lovely ad in our local fishwrap on December 11th, they are still appealing to the finest instincts in only the noblest individuals of our society. You know…

The 99%ers. After their valiant efforts on behalf of ObamaCare cost them the silverbacks, I guess reaching out to the cooly clad, clenched fist, latte-laden-ites was a logical next income derivative step. (And who doesn’t hate the electric company?)

So can’t we all just get along?

Better yet, give ’em a jingle. Let ’em know how much you appreciate their new artistic direction.

Closing off the Gulf to oil tankers will be “easier than drinking a glass of water” for Iran if the Islamic state deems it necessary, Iran’s top naval commander told the country’s state television on Wednesday.

“Closing the Strait of Hormuz for Iran’s armed forces is really easy … or as Iranians say it will be easier than drinking a glass of water,” Habibollah Sayyari told Iran’s English language Press TV.

He’ll be in Tucson, carefully watching the skies for storms, so I have to send it off to him this way.

For the first Christmas ever.

There’s lots of moms and dads, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons whose most precious ones are in uniform…someplace else. They’d love to be home, but duty has other plans, like our Ave’s brave, handsome Marine son (and our nephew) in Afghanistan. And we pray for them all. We are very, very thankful to have our nephew Creature (Kcruella’s brave Army soldier) and our very own Skyler safely home from Afghanistan for THIS Christmas, unlike last year. Crusader’s Marine is home on leave with them in St. Louis and our hearts are full.